Outsourcing – Orchestrating for success

We’re going to put it out there. A great marketing manager
is like the conductor of an orchestra. You don’t necessarily play an instrument
now yourself, but you’re darned good at overseeing a symphony. You guys have
worked at the coal face, yet you also understand strategy… and all those things
make you one very valuable piece of kit.

Of course, the flip side to that is that you’re also one
very expensive resource to be actually writing and implementing email campaigns,
for example, when you could instead be driving policy to support the business’s
objectives. So what gives?

Accepting the baton

It can be hard to let go of the day-to-day stuff.
Entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketing managers often struggle to do so.
It can feel as though other people either simply don’t understand the nuances
of the company messaging or don’t have the passion to get things just right. Nobody
can do everything, however, and nobody should.

The problem is the ultimate goal of most businesses is
growth, and success on that score is dependent on strategic players driving it
forward all the time. These key individuals should be creating new products,
developing services, scaling the business successfully and thinking
strategically. It doesn’t mean sorting out invoicing problems, writing the
content of a newsletter, or designing a banner. In reality, those things are
best left to people who deal with each specialism every day. They don’t have to
go through a re-learning curve each time. So it often makes sense to outsource
those things to others.

Outsourcing builds an orchestra from
a one-man-band…

… and from a marketing team with strategic thinking. Put
simply, outsourcing gives a marketing manager access to experts with
specialised talents. A successful email campaign isn’t simply a matter of
writing a couple of paragraphs and sending it out. It actually requires a broad
range of knowledge and skills. Just a few examples include:

Copywriting tailored to each
recipient/sector/audience

Calls to action that work

Image creation that strikes a chord

HTML coding that escapes spam labelling

Server management that avoids black-listing

No one person can do all those things, and it’s expensive to
have those skills available in a team in-house. Outsourcing a monthly mailing
campaign, therefore, will always be more successful because it means specialists,
guided by the strategy they’re being fed from the marketing manager, are taking
care of the detail.

Outsourcing leaves you free to assess
the score in quiet times

But there’s more to the benefits of outsourcing than that. Few
businesses are flat out every day. There are busy periods, and there are
quieter times. A marketing manager with a team of outsourced specialists can
continue with their strategizing and planning regardless of these peaks and
troughs. When it’s hectic, the orchestra plays to their beat. When it’s quiet,
the orchestra takes a break… and the conductor can continue to review the score
ahead.

Conductors are of most use doing what
they do best… conducting

At the end of the day, as business owners or marketing
managers you know your time is best spent focusing on growing the business.
Without you conducting at the front, setting the pace one beat ahead, the
company will soon stagnate. The key enabler for achieving this, though, is
time. By getting specialists to do the actual tasks, therefore, and by giving
yourself time to do that thinking and planning instead, if as the maxim goes – time
is money – we reckon you’ll find it’s
time well spent.